Voices Of The Lifestream
It's no secret that I love Final Fantasy VII. I won't tell you that it's the best, or perfect, only that I love it. I own the original Final Fantasy VII for the Playstation, way back around the time it first came out, and a well-worn copy of the official strategy guide. I own Advent Children on DVD and will get Advent Children Complete on Blu-Ray one day when I have a means to play Blu-Ray. I have and have beaten Dirge of Cerberus on the PS2, and asked for a PSP for Christmas one year purely to get Crisis Core with it, which I have also beaten. I own about as much of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII as it is reasonably possible for me to at this time, so yeah, I'm a fan.
One of the things I love about Final Fantasy VII is how popular it is. I don't mean that in a pissing contest my-game-sold-more-copies-than-your-game way, but I love how many people can share their excitement and enthusiasm and enjoyment of it with each other. You can talk to so many people about what your favourite parts of FF7 are and why and listen to theirs, and I love that positive aspect of community. One of the things I love most about Final Fantasy VII is how it inspires people like that, and that's what this post is about.
A long time ago, fans of FF7, unpaid normal people like myself and hopefully at least some of the people that read this, got together and started a project, a tribute to the game they all loved. That project was called Voices Of The Lifestream, and it is a collection of fan remixes of many of the musical tracks from FF7, done to a very high level of quality as it was organised on OCRemix, a site some of you probably know about. I found out about this a while back, although a good time after the free online album was actually released, and absolutely loved the quality and diversity of music it contained, and still listen to tracks from it up to today. After a while I decided I wanted to share it with friends that might not have heard it yet, but being 45 tracks long and well over 2 hours of music it's kind of hard to fit into an MSN conversation on most days. So I decided, when I got round to it, to share it here instead, not the whole album, but rather a pick of my favourite tracks from it, to give a sample of what it contains. So that's what this LJ post is about, me sharing a handful of my personal favourite tracks from Voices that genuinely, honestly move me, and hopefully everyone I show this to will like them as well. So without further ado, I've whittled down the selection to my top 7 tracks from the 45 that make up VOTL, which wasn't an easy process. Why 7? Come on, do you really have to ask XP?
This may seem an unusual first track, but I find it a tender and beautiful tune that really shows the diversity of styles in this album.
The mix of nostalgic value of the scenes the original is associated with and the powerful vibe of the remix just always carries me away.
Some might consider this an odd choice, but I just find it to be a movingly beautiful and heartwarming track, one that makes me smile.
I find this track to be absolutely beautiful and it is honestly, very nearly my favourite of the whole lot, I can listen to it for ages.
Although I like others more, I recognise this is probably the highest quality, most exceptionally well-produced track of the whole lot.
This, personally, is my absolute favourite track of the whole album. Not everyone will love it like I do, but for me, it makes me shiver.
This is probably the track with the most sheer awesomeness value to fans of the series. It's Sephiroth, after all, and it rocks.
That's my top 7 favourite tracks of Voices Of The Lifestream, and I really can't stress how tough it was to whittle it down to only that much, I would probably have to do a top 15 before I ran dry of what I consider must-listen-to's, and by then I'd be linking a third of the album. As it is this is about half an hour of solid listening, and that seems like a good size for a favourites list. If any of you want to check out the rest of the album though, here's a link to a playlist of the whole thing, as well as several other good FF7 remixes at the end that the uploader is fond of. I hope everyone I show this to enjoys it, please, leave a comment saying what you think or what your favourite is or something, just to talk :D.
One of the things I love about Final Fantasy VII is how popular it is. I don't mean that in a pissing contest my-game-sold-more-copies-than-your-game way, but I love how many people can share their excitement and enthusiasm and enjoyment of it with each other. You can talk to so many people about what your favourite parts of FF7 are and why and listen to theirs, and I love that positive aspect of community. One of the things I love most about Final Fantasy VII is how it inspires people like that, and that's what this post is about.
A long time ago, fans of FF7, unpaid normal people like myself and hopefully at least some of the people that read this, got together and started a project, a tribute to the game they all loved. That project was called Voices Of The Lifestream, and it is a collection of fan remixes of many of the musical tracks from FF7, done to a very high level of quality as it was organised on OCRemix, a site some of you probably know about. I found out about this a while back, although a good time after the free online album was actually released, and absolutely loved the quality and diversity of music it contained, and still listen to tracks from it up to today. After a while I decided I wanted to share it with friends that might not have heard it yet, but being 45 tracks long and well over 2 hours of music it's kind of hard to fit into an MSN conversation on most days. So I decided, when I got round to it, to share it here instead, not the whole album, but rather a pick of my favourite tracks from it, to give a sample of what it contains. So that's what this LJ post is about, me sharing a handful of my personal favourite tracks from Voices that genuinely, honestly move me, and hopefully everyone I show this to will like them as well. So without further ado, I've whittled down the selection to my top 7 tracks from the 45 that make up VOTL, which wasn't an easy process. Why 7? Come on, do you really have to ask XP?
Click to viewThis may seem an unusual first track, but I find it a tender and beautiful tune that really shows the diversity of styles in this album.
The mix of nostalgic value of the scenes the original is associated with and the powerful vibe of the remix just always carries me away.
Some might consider this an odd choice, but I just find it to be a movingly beautiful and heartwarming track, one that makes me smile.
I find this track to be absolutely beautiful and it is honestly, very nearly my favourite of the whole lot, I can listen to it for ages.
Although I like others more, I recognise this is probably the highest quality, most exceptionally well-produced track of the whole lot.
This, personally, is my absolute favourite track of the whole album. Not everyone will love it like I do, but for me, it makes me shiver.
This is probably the track with the most sheer awesomeness value to fans of the series. It's Sephiroth, after all, and it rocks.
That's my top 7 favourite tracks of Voices Of The Lifestream, and I really can't stress how tough it was to whittle it down to only that much, I would probably have to do a top 15 before I ran dry of what I consider must-listen-to's, and by then I'd be linking a third of the album. As it is this is about half an hour of solid listening, and that seems like a good size for a favourites list. If any of you want to check out the rest of the album though, here's a link to a playlist of the whole thing, as well as several other good FF7 remixes at the end that the uploader is fond of. I hope everyone I show this to enjoys it, please, leave a comment saying what you think or what your favourite is or something, just to talk :D.